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Roast Lamb

Roast lamb with a simple gravy and mint sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,372 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Roast Lamb

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and roast

  1. Wipe the lamb with a wet towel.

  2. Place it in front of the fire or in a very hot oven (400°F / 200°C) to brown quickly.

  3. Once browned, season with salt and pepper, dust with flour, and baste with drippings every 15 minutes.

  4. Cook for about 20 minutes per pound.

Make the gravy

  1. For the gravy, brown 2 tablespoons of drippings with 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Stir in 1 pint of boiling water and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve the gravy as soon as it boils.

Make the mint sauce

  1. For mint sauce, mix 1 cup of vinegar, 1 cup of sugar, and ½ cup of chopped green mint.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the meat that browns, cooks through and becomes the main dish.
Flour
Dusted on the roast and browned with drippings, it thickens the gravy and adds color.
Drippings
Fat from the roast that browns with flour to build the gravy's flavor and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the mint sauce and balances its sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the mint sauce and offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Browning the lamb in a very hot oven. Searing the surface at high heat creates browned flavor through the Maillard reaction. Starting hot browns the outside quickly, while basting keeps the surface from drying out during the rest of the roast.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, flour, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, flour, vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More roast lamb recipes

Quarter 15Shoulder 15Forequarter 13with Mint Sauce 7Fore Quarter 3Leg 3 See all 71 →

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